I think Y-chrome test is still the gold standard for dna research, but the direct male line requirement makes the pool of possible tests much smaller. As much as I love playing with autosomal dna, it is still so random, it is still really hard to get solid matches.

I am tearing my hair out because I have five "solid" dna autosomal matches on FTDNA to a couple who lived mid1800s. We all test out as fourth cousins, good sized chucks of matching segments passed down through known and documented siblings, but they are all in different chromosomes...nowhere do the five line up on same places although two or three different combinations do appear. For those who think having a chromosome browser to confirm matches will be "the answer"..it is still really hard to squeeze out those solid autosomal dna results. They do happen but not consistently...so the y-test is still useful and more reliable, but only for the single line going back to a common male ancestor.